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DEMOS-Demokratisk og effektiv styring, planlegging og forvaltning

Planning and Sustainable Urban Land use

Awarded: NOK 4.2 mill.

The research project assesses urban regeneration under the private market model. The overall purpose is to identify how land use in cities can be made more sustainable. The research project assesses the interplay between market forces, institutional arrangements and planning in enabling redevelopment of underexploited and derelict urban land. The vast majority of building lots and properties in redevelopment areas are in private hands. In eight of the 22 redevelopments we studied, one owner held all development rights. In the remaining 14 sites, the number of owners ranged from six to more than 20. However, we found that multiple ownership does not necessarily slow down or complicate the redevelopment process. Areas where the development rights are spread across multiple owners are just as likely to be developed. However, on land with multiple ownership planning has to consider the ownership structure: the land use layout and the instruments used to finance infrastructure must take into account the ownership structure and allow the individual owners to develop at their own pace. Under the private market model, commercial developers build new houses that are made available on the market. Redevelopment is no exception. For all cities except Oslo, the developers mainly establish themselves in redevelopment areas where they potentially can harvest the highest prices. However, new houses built on redeveloped lands tend to sell at lower fixed prices compared with similar units in infill and other small-scale development projects. When selling, the redevelopments are divided into stages. The developer sells the first stage before the next stage is started. Our analyses show no rise in developers? asking price as the redevelopment progresses. Rather, the first units are often the highest priced. Redevelopment adds new housing units to the local market, and this market is part of the larger urban housing market. The private market model should regard macro trends in the housing market. Data from other cities are used to illuminate the effect of housing built on redeveloped lands, indicating that regeneration projects usually add to the local market heterogeneity, in addition to adding more units to the market. New residential areas must comply with national and local standards regarding outdoor areas, green infrastructure, playgrounds, parks and the like. We assessed what qualities the redevelopment areas will bring to the city when completed. The new developments hold several qualities that are ?public? in the sense of being fully available for residents in adjacent neighborhoods and citizens at large. We also found that the formal distribution of power between stakeholders in the development decision process set by the Planning and Building Act is very important for the balancing of qualities for the public versus qualities reserved for the new residents. Moreover, we found that interest groups and activists put important qualities on the agenda that were otherwise ignored by all other stakeholders. There are ?struggles for qualities? embedded in the planning processes and the presence of interest groups and activists are important for optimizing the end-result for the citizens at large. Redevelopment processes affect urban biodiversity and associated ecosystem services in multiple ways. The lengthy processes leave temporary free spaces in the cityscape that are quickly colonized by plants and animals. We developed new mapping methods to quantify the non-sealed surfaces within brownfields and greyfields. The methods are automated using GIS, allowing us to easily conduct similar analyses of both state and change over time, in any urban area. These maps identify the green infrastructure and potential habitat in urban areas, independent of what use the municipality has designated the lands to. The maps enable analyses of how and where developments affect green infrastructure over time. Our mapping showed that the number of plant species present was low in development areas close to city centers and increased with distance from the center. Somewhat alarmingly, we found a high incidence of blacklisted plant species (present in over 40 % of green spaces). These alien species are considered to represent a high risk of negative ecological consequences for native biodiversity. Another key finding related to the use of old map data. At present there are no regulations about quality control of maps or about how often maps must be updated. Species occurrences are an example of something that is constantly changing, in particular in an environment as dynamic as the urban. Our concern based on these findings is that sometimes using outdated maps may be worse than not having maps at all, e.g. as management efforts may be directed to the wrong place, or misguided efforts may be initiated that would be highly cost-inefficient.

The proposal departs on the political objective of compact urban development. It studies the role of new plan-related instruments in the Norwegian Planning Act in handling compact city challenges. Compact city development is seen as the most sustainable urban growth model internationally as well as in Norway. Transformation and reuse of grey- and brown fields into higher density land use has for more than 20 years been regarded as important for researching a sustainable development. However, there are s till central located underdeveloped areas in our cities. Why are these urban areas still underdeveloped, despite high land values and despite being earmarked for development in municipal master plans? These areas are often dominated by small industrial es tates and scattered buildings of many kind, they often consist of many different plots and multiple ownership. The research proposal departs on the problems of redeveloping these areas. It draws on planning theory, market theory and collective action theo ry in order to build a theoretical base for analysing this aspect of urban development. The different theories are to a little degree put together. The project also assesses the phenomena empirically with case studies, analysis of land use registers and s urvey. The aim of the project is to reach a deeper understanding of urban development mechanisms, but also to contribute to the design of planning instrument. The proposal is designed to view the Norwegian urban governance challenges in an international perspective. We will contrast the planning system, instruments and practises for handling urban land dynamics to similar systems and practises in UK, Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The project will facilitate academic discussions between the Norwegian research team and an international research group/panel consisting of international researchers. These international colleagues are distinguished contributors to academic discussions on urban land development.

Funding scheme:

DEMOS-Demokratisk og effektiv styring, planlegging og forvaltning